Heisler: All these years later, Clippers still just looking for a home

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Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, right, has done many wise things, such as adding Jerry West, left, to their front-office mix, but if the Clippers couldn’t make much of a dent in the marketplace during the five seasons when they were a playoff team and the Lakers were abysmal, can they ever do it? (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

In a hometown salute to “Hoosiers” lore, the Pacers play a video on their scoreboard that says, “In 49 states, it’s just basketball.

“But this is Indiana.”

Then there are the Clippers, now one of the NBA’s most valuable (No. 8 in the NBA, according to Forbes) and intelligently run franchises with two maximum salary slots saved for next summer, which could lure two premier free agents like Kawhi Leonard, DeMarcus Cousins or Jimmy Butler.

But this is Los Angeles.

In good times, or the Clippers’ best ever … and bad, or the Lakers’ worst ever … or both, as in recent seasons … the Clips remain in eclipse.

Owner Steve Ballmer has announced, in his usual giddy style, that the team “will not suck for a year, two years.”

He could be right, but we just had a five-year lesson in what they’re up against.

From the 2012-13 season through 2016-17, the Clippers had the third-best record in the NBA at 273-137, behind only the Warriors (305-105) and Spurs (303-107).

During that time the Clippers ditched owner Donald Sterling, their laughingstock-turned-disgrace.

The Clippers torched the Lakers whenever they saw them, going 18-2 in the “City Series.”

The Clippers had the exciting young team, known as “Lob City,” with Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, a squad Magic Johnson compared to his “Showtime” Lakers.

Kobe Bryant, who called his Lakers “an old damn team,” agreed with Magic, noting the Clippers “have higher jumpers than ‘Showtime’ did.”

And none of it, or all of it together, changed a thing.

The Lakers, seemingly headed back to relevance, if not greatness, will remain local kingpins.

For the Clippers, the question is always: What now?

Under Ballmer as with Sterling, they’re still less an NBA franchise than a wealthy owner’s vanity project, with better prospects other places where they would have their own fan base – Orange County? Seattle? – but no intention of going there.

Sterling picked up the team in San Diego on a lark, supposedly paying $12.5 million – actually just assuming the players’ contracts and getting the franchise for free.

He then showed he was incapable of running the team in San Diego before moving it here in 1984 and proving it again with more pratfalls and scorn, with Jay Leno making Clippers jokes a running feature.

Many hapless seasons later, an amazing series of things happened.

Despite maintaining his tight-fisted grip on power, Sterling was neutralized by his people – notably team president Andy Roeser and GM Neil Olshey – who acquired the Blake-DJ-CP3 nucleus.

With Coach Doc Rivers lured in and given control of the basketball operations, Donald then fell out of the picture entirely when his racist remarks, revealed by girlfriend V. Stiviano, got him barred from the NBA.

Enter Ballmer for (ka-ching!) $2 billion.

There’s no comparison between Sterling, a real estate genius but a gloomy loner, and Ballmer, the exuberant supersalesman.

Sterling was clueless but defiant. Ballmer seeks smart help and listens.

Nevertheless, the Clippers remain a vanity project for Ballmer to do with what he wants.

Take his then-staggering $2 billion purchase price that made the once-forlorn Clippers, of all franchises, the NBA’s first billion-dollar team.

Forbes projects operating profit over Ballmer’s five seasons at $79 million. At that pace, he will make his $2 billion back in 2139.

Actually, he made it back in the stock market within two years. With 330 million shares of Microsoft after retiring as CEO in 2013, it took only a $6.06 move from Aug. 12, 2014 when he bought the Clippers to $53.06 on July 31, 2016.

With the stock on a five-year rampage, Microsoft closed Friday at $109.57 … meaning Ballmer has added another $18.6 billion to what was a $25 billion fortune … showing how little ordinary profit-loss considerations mean to the Clippers.

This was a huge advantage when cash meant power, as with Jerry Buss and his “Showtime” Lakers. Now an ever-tougher salary cap keeps Ballmer from going out and buying titles.

On the other hand, other teams’ mere existence mandates their purpose. The Lakers live to win titles and are terrified of coming up short, as Magic just showed, going off on Luke Walton at the eight-game mark.

The Clippers have had good times and bad times and who ever really cared?

Glowing as the Clippers seemed to be in 2014 when Ballmer arrived, he had bought a team in a vice with the Lakers’ domination of the market and the Warriors-Spurs-Rockets dominance of the West.

Not that there are any victims. Clipper players earn princely sums and are fawned over on the street, almost as if they’re Lakers.

Local fans can support the Clippers or not, buying tickets in the local consumer’s delight – easier to get than the Lakers tix for the same NBA competition! – as they choose.

If the team is dead-ended organizationally, it has been for decades and life went on.

Ballmer has done sharp things. Lawrence Frank, whom he bumped up, is a bright executive. The imaginative hiring of Jerry West upgraded the front office. Bringing back Rivers, who looked primed for the usual scapegoating, was pleasantly and wisely unconventional.

The Clippers made the hard choices so many teams would have put off, dealing Griffin to avoid “the trap of the middle” that West always feared – that’s the Laker in him – producing the potential for two maximum salary slots next summer.

As for vision, Ballmer appears focused on joining the redevelopment of Inglewood. Personally, I would bet that works a lot better for the Rams and Chargers than the Clippers.

The Clippers may well land Leonard, who still reportedly wants to come home to Southern California, which would put them in position to get another star to team up with Kawhi.